Timothy Coghlan and George Levey

“ The Lower Palaeozoic and Archean rocks build up the Highlands of Victoria, which occupy the whole width of the state at its eastern end, extending from the New South Wales border on the north to the shore of the Southern Ocean on the south. These Highlands constitute the whole of the mountainous country of Gippsland and the north-eastern districts. They become narrower to the west, and finally, beyond the old plateau of Dundas, disappear beneath the recent loams of the plains along the South Australian border. ”

“ The north-west corner of the colony, equally flat, is dry and sometimes sandy, and frequently bare of vegetation, though in one part some seven or eight millions of acres are covered with the dense brushwood known as “mallee scrub.” This wide western plain is slightly broken in two places. In the south the wild ranges of Cape Otway are covered over a considerable area with richly luxurious but almost impassable forests. This district has been reserved as a state forest and its coast forms a favourite holiday resort, the scenery being very attractive. ”

“ The Mesozoic rocks are confined to southern Victoria; they build up the hills of southern Gippsland and the Otway Ranges; and farther west, hidden by later rocks, they occur under the coast of the western district. Between the southern mountain chain and the Victorian Highlands occurs the Great Valley of Victoria, occupied by sedimentary and volcanic rocks of Kainozoic age. The North-Western Plains, occurring between the northern foot of the Highlands and the Murray, are occupied by Kainozoic sediments. ”

“ The middle of the plain is crossed by a thin line of mountains, known as the Australian Pyrenees, at the western extremity of which there are several irregularly placed transverse ranges, the chief being the Grampians, the Victoria Range and the Sierra Range. Their highest point is Mount William (3600 feet) . The eastern half of the colony is wholly different. Though there is plenty of level land, it occurs in small patches, and chiefly in the south, in Gippsland, which extends from Corner Inlet to Cape Howe. ”

“ Over ten millions of acres are thus covered with forest-clad mountains which in due time will become a very valuable asset of the state. The Australian Alps are connected with the Pyrenees by a long ridge called the Dividing Range (1500 to 3000 ft. high) .
Victoria is fairly well watered, but its streams are generally too small to admit of navigation. This, however, is not the case with the Murray river. ”

“ The largest development of the volcanic rocks are a series of confluent sheets of basalt, forming the Western Plains which occupy over 10,000 sq. m. of south-western Victoria. They are crossed almost continuously by the South-Western railway for 166 m. from Melbourne to Warrnambool. The volcanic craters built up by later eruptions are well preserved: such are Mount Elephant, a simple breached cone; Mount Noorat, with a large primary crater and four secondary craters on its flanks; Mount Warrenheip, near Ballarat, a single cone with the crater breached to the north-west. ”

“ The brown coals occur to the south-east of Melbourne, under the basalts between it and Geelong. Brown coal is also abundant under the Murray plains in north-western Victoria. The Kainozoic marine rocks occur at intervals along the southern coast and in the valleys opening from it. The most important horizon is apparently of Miocene age. The rocks occur at intervals in eastern Victoria, along the coast and up the river valleys, from the Snowy river westward to Alberton. ”

“ Victoria has no mountains covered with snow, which in Italy and South America supply with water the rivers at the season of the year when the land needs irrigation, and it was necessary to construct large and expensive reservoirs. ”

“ The rainfall is more equable than in any portion of Australia, but the northern and north-western districts, which are the most remote from the sea and the Dividing Range, are subject to droughts, which, although not so severe or so frequent as in the interior of the continent, are sufficiently disastrous in their effects. ”

“ The rivers which flow southwards into the ocean are numerous. The Snowy river rises in New South Wales, and in Victoria flows entirely through wild and almost wholly unoccupied territory. The Tambo (120 m. long) , which rises in the heart of the Australian Alps, crosses the Gippsland plains and falls into Lake King, one of the Gippsland lakes; into the same lake falls the Mitchell river, rising also in the Australian Alps. ”

“ The coal is of excellent quality. The mudstones, which form the main bulk of this series, are largely composed of volcanic debris, which decomposes to a fertile soil. These rocks trend south-westward along the Bass Range, which reaches Western Port. They skirt the Mornington Peninsula, underlie part of Port Phillip and the Bellarine Peninsula, and are exposed in the Barrabool Hills to the south-west of Geelong; thence they extend into the Otway Ranges, which are wholly built of these rocks and contain some coal seams. ”

“ Eucalyptus dumosa is a species which grows only 6 to 12 ft. high, but with a straight stem, the trees grow so close together that it is difficult to penetrate the scrub formed by them. Eleven and a half million acres of the Wimmera district are covered with this “mallee scrub” as it is called. Recent legislation has made this land easy of acquisition, and the whole of it has been taken up on pastoral leases. Five hundred thousand acres have recently been taken up as an irrigation colony on Californian principles and laid out in 40-acre farms and orchards. ”

“ The years 1840 and 1841 were periods of depression owing to the decline in the value of all descriptions of live stock, for which the first settlers had paid high prices; but there was a steady immigration from Great Britain of men with means, attracted by the profits of sheep-farming, and of labourers and artisans who obtained free passages under the provisions of the Wakefield system, under which half the proceeds from the sale and occupation of crown lands were expended upon the introduction of workers. ”

“ The volcanic series begins with a line of great dacite domes including the geburite-dacite of Macedon, which is associated with sölvsbergites and trachy-dolerites. The eruption of these domes was followed by that of sheets of basalt of several different ages and the intrusion of some trachyte dykes. The oldest basalts are associated with the Oligocene lake deposits; and fragments of the large lava sheets of this period form some of the table-topped mountains in the Highlands of eastern Victoria. ”

“ The discontent culminated, at Ballarat in December 1854, in riots in which there was a considerable loss of life both amongst the miners and the troops. Eventually, an export duty on gold was substituted for the licence fee, but every miner had to take out a right which enabled him to occupy a limited area of land for mining, and also for residence. The census taken in 1854 showed a population of 236,778. The new Constitution was proclaimed in 1855, and the old Executive Council was gazetted as the first responsible ministry. ”

“ Ballarat, which is over 1000 ft. high, always has a few snowstorms, and the roads to Omeo among the Australian Alps lie under several feet of snow in the winter. The general healthiness of the climate is shown by the fact that the average death-rate for the last five years has been only 12.71 of the population.
Population.— As regards population, Victoria maintained the leading position among the Australasian colonies until the end of 1891, when New South Wales overtook it. The population in 1905 was 1,218,571, the proportion of the sexes being nearly equal. ”

“ The native bear is a frugivorous little animal, and very harmless. Bats are numerous, the largest species being the flying fox, very abundant in some districts. Eagles, hawks, turkeys, pigeons, ducks quail, snipe and plover are common; but the characteristic denizens of the forest are vast flocks of parrots, parakeets and cockatoos, with sulphur-coloured or crimson crests. The laughing jackass (giant kingfisher) is heard in all the country parts, and magpies are numerous everywhere. Snakes are numerous, but less than one-fourth of the species are venomous, and they are all very shy. ”

“ The bay is shallow and of little use for navigation. The coast continues rocky round Cape Liptrap. Wilson’s Promontory is a great rounded mass of granite hills, with wild and striking scenery, tree-fern gullies and gigantic gum-trees, connected with the mainland by a narrow sandy isthmus. At its extremity lie a multitude of rocky islets, with steep granite edges. North of this cape, and opening to the east, lies Corner Inlet, which is dry at low water. The coast now continues low to the extremity of the colony. ”

“ The local legislative authority is vested in a parliament of two chambers, both elective—the Legislative Council, composed of thirty-five members, and the Legislative Assembly, composed of sixty-eight members. One-half of the members of the Council retire every three years. The members of the Assembly are elected by universal suffrage for the term of three years, but the chamber can be dissolved at any time by the Governor in council. ”

“ The dividends paid by gold-mining companies in 1905 amounted to £454,431, which, although about the average of recent years, showed a decline of £168,966 as compared with the sum distributed in 1904. Up to the close of 1905 the total value of gold won from the first discovery in 1851 was £273,236,500. No other metallic minerals are systematically worked, although many valuable deposits are known to exist. Brown coal, or lignite, occurs extensively, and attempts have frequently been made to use the mineral for ordinary fuel purposes, but without much success. ”

“ The Victorian railways were handed over to the control of three commissioners, who to a considerable extent were made independent of the government, and the civil service was placed under the supervision of an independent board. In 1887 the representatives of Victoria met those of the other British colonies and of the United Kingdom in London, under the presidency of Lord Knutsford, in order to discuss the questions of defence, postal and telegraphic communication, and the contribution of Australia to the Imperial navy. ”

“ But a great part of this eastern half is occupied with the complicated mass of ranges known collectively as the Australian Alps. The whole forms a plateau averaging from 1000 to 2000 ft. high, with many smaller tablelands ranging from 3000 to 5000 ft. in height. The highest peak, Bogong, is 6508 ft. in altitude. The ranges are so densely covered with vegetation that it is extremely difficult to penetrate them. About fifteen peaks over 5000 ft. in height have been measured. Along the ranges grow the giant trees for which Victoria is famous. ”

“ Black coal is now being raised in increasingly large quantities. The principal collieries are the Outrim Howitt, the Coal Creek Proprietary, the Jumbunna and the Korumburra, all in the Gippsland district. The production of coal in 1905 was 155,185 tons, valued at £79,060; £4100 worth of silver and £11,159 worth of tin were raised; the value of other minerals produced was £93,392, making a total mineral production (exclusive of gold) of £187,711.
Agriculture.—Judged by the area under tillage, Victoria ranks first among the states of the Australian group. ”

“ Measures of a democratic and collectivist tendency have since obtained the assent of the Legislature. The franchise of property-holders not resident in an electorate was abolished and the principle of “one man one vote” was established. Acts have been passed sanctioning Old Age Pensions; prohibiting shops, except those selling perishable goods, from keeping open more than eight hours; compelling the proprietors to give their assistants one half-holiday every six days; preventing persons from working more than forty-eight hours a week ”

“ Persons who desired to acquire freeholds for the purpose of tillage could only do so by purchasing the land at auction, and the local squatters, unwilling to be deprived of any portion of a valuable property, were generally willing to pay a price per acre with which no person of small means desirous of embarking upon agricultural pursuits could compete. ”

“ The disagreeable feature of the Victorian climate is the occurrence of north winds, which blow on an average about sixty days in the year In winter they are cold and dry, and have a slightly depressing effect ”

“ They extend up the old valley of Port Phillip as far as Keilor to the north of Melbourne, and are widely distributed under the volcanic rocks of the Western Plains. They are exposed on the floors of the volcanic cauldrons, and have been found by mining operations under the volcanic rocks of the Ballarat plateau near Pitfield. The Miocene sea extended up the Glenelg valley, round the western border of the Dundas Highlands, and spread over the Lower Murray Basin into New South Wales ”

“ The maximum shade temperature at Melbourne in 1905 was 108.5°, and the minimum 32°, giving a mean of 56.1°. The temperature never falls below freezing-point, except for an hour or two before sunrise in the coldest month. Snow has been known to fall in Melbourne for a few minutes two or three times during a long period of years. ”

“ It is singularly beautiful when seen in groves, for these have all the appearance of lofty pillared cathedrals. These trees are among the tallest in the world, averaging in some districts about 300 ft. ”

“ He was followed by John Pascoe Fawkner and other settlers from Van Diemen Land, who occupied the fertile plains of the new territory. In 1836 Captain Lonsdale was sent to Melbourne by the government of New South Wales to act as resident magistrate in Port Phillip. The first census taken in 1838 showed that the population was 3511, of whom 3080 were males and 431 females. In 1839 Mr Latrobe was appointed superintendent of Port Phillip, and a resident judge was nominated for Melbourne, with jurisdiction over the territory which now forms the state of Victoria. ”